Through the Darkness
by cait83
Summary: This is a freshie fic. The story of how Ari comes to meet Mick and Josef
1. Chapter 1

Warning! This is rated R because it contains a rape!

Author notes: Ari is my RP character and this is the story of how she ended up in LA with Mick and Josef.

Rated R for safety

Disclaimer: If you recognize it then I don't own it. Ari is mine though, as well as Sienna. Any resemblance between them and any living, dead or fictional characters is purely coincidental! The other characters belong to their creators and owners. No copyright infringement intended in any way or form.

Comments are still the only food my muses accept so please... send any comments you have, good or bad.

This part was beta'd by Des, lot's of love to her.

* * *

"When I think back, it all seems to have begun on that fateful trip to Berlin when I was 18. Back then, I was the spitting image of the perfect daughter and the perfect student.

Some friends and I belonged to a special group in school, and that fall we went to Berlin together with teachers in order to meet groups of students from other countries and discuss our view on the European Union. Today, it sounds a bit boring but back then, it was very fun.

I'm not about to bore you with all the details of the trip -- I'm only going to tell you we had a lot of fun together. That was, until the night the German kids showed us "the town."

They took us to this disco, their name for it, that had three drinks included in the entrance fee. Now, like I mentioned earlier, I was the spitting image of the perfect daughter which meant that I had never had a drink before.

You know where this is going. I tasted one and liked it -- so I had another, and another, and another. It was all fun, we danced and laughed. Then... I started feeling strange... the rest of that night is either blurry or completely black to me.

At times, some word said in passing can trigger a memory from that night but otherwise, most of what I know is what my friends and the cops told me afterwards. My friends told me that I began acting out of character, going wild, dancing with a complete stranger.

Then suddenly -- I had disappeared.

They looked everywhere inside the club for me but couldn't find me. Finally, as they were leaving, they discovered the necklace I had worn. They told me they found it lying on the ground, battered, broken, and discarded.

It was then that they peered down the dark alley behind the club. That... that is where they found me, bloody and beaten, my clothes in shreds and tatters. Not knowing what else to do, the German kids called for an ambulance, and of course, the cops.

The next morning I woke up in a hospital bed. I was dazed, confused, and bleary-eyed, but ... surrounded by my friends, teachers and the cops.

Everyone asking how I was and what I remembered. Honestly, I remembered very little.

One of the officers told me that someone had slipped a drug into one of my drinks. From what the doctors found after their examination, this same guy managed to get me on my own, dragged me out to the alley and... raped me.

Repeatedly.

But, at least -- I tried to fight back. There were defensive wounds on my hands and arms.

Thankfully, out of all this, I only have a few hazy memories.  
One of these memories has only recently surfaced. I am running, somehow I got away. I am bleeding and behind me the guy is walking, chasing me, knowing he will get to me in time. I stagger around, trying to run faster but I keep tripping -- feeling so dizzy, unable to see straight, everything is blurry.

From behind, I hear his voice calling to me.

"You can run but you cannot hide, doll. I will catch you and when I do, the fun'll begin. You like fun, don'cha, doll? Keep running, doll. It just makes it all that sweeter when I get you."

The word, "doll." used to trigger the memory and completely freak me out but these days I've slowly gotten used to it. I know he caught up with me but, my memory of that is thankfully mostly black. A few hazy images of the guy over me, of feeling pain lash through my body.

One thing I have never managed to remember is what his face looked like. That really disappointed the cops. They knew who did it but, since I couldn't point him out the guy never got caught

I had to stay in the hospital for a few days to make sure I had no serious injuries, then finally I was allowed to go home. But, nothing would ever be the same.

The perfect daughter and student was gone forever. In her place there was substituted was a moody and scared little teenager who was tired of life.

I had recurring nightmares -- although I could never remember anything from them when I woke up.

But that wasn't the end of my troubles. As I grew older I developed issues with being around men. When it got so bad I couldn't even let my dad touch me anymore, my parents sent me to therapy.

It was during this time that I found vampires and a new friend.

E transferred to our school just a week or two after the trip to Berlin and we immediately became friends. My new darkness and her own darkness fit together.

She was the one who introduced me to the works of Anne Rice. I was completely intrigued. My parents didn't exactly like the friendship, but they figured that as long as I was talking to someone I may be able to rise above my gloom.

I had thought about suicide many times that fall but -- I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't inflict pain on myself. That was easy, but I wanted more... and the desire for pain invaded my daydreams, all of which surrounded the wish that a vampire would come along, pierce my flesh, and take me away from the doldrums of life. My friendship with E and the therapy slowly brought me away from thoughts of suicide, yet I was still not even close to being back to who I had been.

That girl had died in that dirty alley in the middle of Germany.

Through all this I had almost completely stopped studying and come summer I just barely graduated.

Knowing I didn't have the strength to do anymore studying at that time I decided to take the year off. E and I moved into a small apartment, and I took a night shift job at the local 7'Eleven.

The year passed, and I started feeling better, which unfortunately meant that I started going back to the habits of the more well behaved girl I had been.

Having colored my hair black when all this started I now allowed it to go back to my naturally blonde color. The change also put a strain on my relationship with E for a while since she hadn't known me before all this.

At the end of the year I was well enough to decide I actually wanted to go back to school. I also decided that it was time to move out from the place E and I shared. Besides, E found a boyfriend and they wanted to move in together. This was good, because frankly, our friendship wouldn't survive us living together anymore.

So, that fall I moved out and enrolled at university to get my MBA and E's boyfriend moved in.

To this day, the only remnants from those days are my fascination with vampires, my occasional triggered memory and my friendship with E. These days she is one of a selected few who knows about what happened to me in Berlin and what has happened to me since."

End of part 1


	2. Chapter 2

Author notes: Ari is my RP character and this is the story of how she ended up in LA with Mick and Josef.

Rated R for safety

Disclaimer: If you recognize it then I don't own it. Ari is mine though, as well as Sienna. Any resemblance between them and any living, dead or fictional characters is purely coincidental! The other characters belong to their creators and owners. No copyright infringement intended in any way or form.

Comments are still the only food my muses accept so please... send any comments you have, good or bad.

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"My first two years at Uni were pretty uneventful. I made a few new friends, some I grew close with and some you only met in classes, and life moved slowly on. I started to be able to forget about Berlin and actually started to feel happy again. E broke up with her boyfriend and came to live with me for a while before finding her own place close by. She and I and my new friend Sassy started to hang out together on our spare time and we grew close.

Then something happened that changed things.

E was quite the party animal when she was single and one night, while out clubbing, she met a man. He was older, we just didn't know how much older, and so we cautioned E that she ought to be careful. Of course, she didn't listen. He fascinated her. Magnus looked like he was about 35-40. A little worn around the edges but still handsome and very charming. Something about E had caught his attention and he started wooing her. It wasn't just the age difference that had me and Sassy worried though, it was the fact that he was constantly surrounded by 4 very beautiful young ladies who seemed very possessive of him.

One morning E came to my place deliriously happy, knowing I would be accepting of what she told me since the main thing we still had in common was our fascination with vampires. The previous night Magnus had showed her what he was and asked her to become his freshie. Now, I realize she should never have spoken about this but… it was a good thing she did as it turned out.

During the following weeks she and I spoke a lot and she told me many things about vampires, especially about all the misconceptions in literature, in films and on TV. I was intrigued by the freshie thing but didn't feel ready at that time to become one, though E definitely tried to nag me into it. I was still uncomfortable around men and Magnus did nothing to reassure me.

During these weeks it was the first time I had seen E being so completely happy. That alone relaxed me and Sassy and we started to fully support her strange relationship with Magnus.

Life moved on, I finally graduated and got my MBA with honors a little ahead of time. Then one night E came to me crying.

We had found out that the four girls surrounding Magnus was his exclusives and now they were starting to act jealous over the attention E was getting. They had changed from ignoring her to being frosty and now they had turned catty, showing their claws, and started to say anything they could think of to hurt E.

Being Magnus exclusives he tended to take their word for what happened between the girls when they were alone over E's but she still didn't want to stay away. Magnus made her happier than she had ever been.

That was when Karl turned up on the scene.

Karl was Magnus fledgling. They had a strained relationship but, Magnus still cared for Karl as if they were father and son for real. Due to this, Magnus made the mistake of allowing Karl to move in to the house where Magnus lived with his freshies.

Karl immediately took a liking to E. He followed her around which unfortunately meant that he met me and Sassy.  
He must have decided early on that he wanted all three of us but, we didn't notice that. At first he was gentlemanly around us. Not behaving badly but still, always turning up where E was and we all felt like there was something off. He felt like one of those sleezy people who tries to be nice to you to get you to trust them only to turn and do something nasty to you.

After some time, he decided it was time for an advance so he asked E to feed him. She denied, not trusting him, and that's when he started showing his true color. He yelled at her that she had to feed him, being a freshie that was her job, but she replied that even though she was a freshie the term was still Willing Freshie which meant she still had the right to refuse. Karl was furious and before storming out he made her a promise; one day he would feed from her and she was going to regret not giving her blood to him freely.

This scared E enough that she told Magnus about it. Magnus then made his second mistake. He asked her to become his exclusive, thinking that that alone would keep her safe. Instead, that is what caused the next set of events to happen.

E becoming an exclusive sent Magnus other exclusive into a rage.

One night, shortly after, the three of us, E, me and Sassy, went out to celebrate. We were sitting at a table in the back of a local pub when Karl and the four exclusives walked in. The five of them walked up to our table and started taunting E. Sassy and me tried our best to give our support but, they were very good with the verbal abuse, and finally E had enough and ran out the back door. Me and Sassy followed and once again I found myself in a back alley facing horrific events.

Me and Sassy were trying to console E, not having much luck, when suddenly Karl dropped down from the roof above us. He shoved me against the wall across the alley and took a choke hold on Sassy while the exclusives rushed out through the door and dragged E away.

After the exclusives had disappeared with E, Karl held Sassy up to his face and gave her an ultimatum. Feed him willingly or die. Sassy didn't like vampires like me and E and so we had never told her about the details around E's relationship with Magnus. Hence, she didn't know exactly what Karl was asking her, and she didn't believe he would actually kill her, so she denied him.

Seconds later he ripped her throat out in front of my eyes. I have never seen anything more frightening in my life. He wasn't even remotely human anymore. In front of me stood a monster and he was murdering one of my best friends in front of my eyes with me helpless to do anything about it. I knew I was seconds away from death as well since there was no way I would ever consider feeding him and there was no chance I could fight him off. I knew only a miracle could save me then.

It wasn't really a miracle that saved me, but they sure looked heavenly to me.

After having killed Sassy and thrown her body away like a rag doll. Karl turned toward me and was just about to give me the same ultimatum when a large group of heavy muscled men came bustling around the corner and into the alley. They took one look at the scene in front of them before several of them had their cell phones up and were calling for police and ambulances, the rest ran toward Karl to try and make a citizens arrest. Karl ran, and of course got away.

Once again I woke up in the hospital, this time surrounded by family and cops. But, my best friends were nowhere to be found. E was still missing and Sassy was dead."

End of part 2


	3. Chapter 3

Author notes: Ari is my RP character and this is the story of how she ended up in LA with Mick and Josef. A thanks to Jen for helping me beta this one

Rated R for safety

Disclaimer: If you recognize it then I don't own it. Ari is mine though, as well as Sienna. Any resemblance between them and any living, dead or fictional characters is purely coincidental! The other characters belong to their creators and owners. No copyright infringement intended in any way or form.

Comments are still the only food my muses accept so please... send any comments you have, good or bad.

* * *

" Have you ever noticed how one bad thing is usually followed by another bad thing? I have. And the last five years of my life has been a perfect example, at least until I got to L.A.

I was still in hospital, recovering from my injuries when my grandmother was brought in for a broken hip. They performed a routine procedure- surgically pinning the joint together so that it would heal properly- and a couple of hours after the operation, she passed away. No one could explain it, and the blow was almost more than I could take. I never even got to say goodbye. I still miss her so much I can barely breathe sometimes. She was the one who took care of me when I was a kid, and was my confidante as a I grew up. Whenever I got sick, there she was with comfort food and encouragement until I was well again. Whenever I was bored, I'd call her. Whenever something good happened, she was the first one I'd call. She was the only member of my family I spoke to about the rape. And then, suddenly, she was dead.

After the funeral, we were all surprised to find that my grandmother had left a will. My whole life, she had acted as if she barely had any money, so to say I was shocked by the content of that will is an understatement. Except for her house and some other worldly possessions she left everything to me. "Everything" as in a fortune that means I never have to work a single day for the rest of my life, and I can still live comfortably. I didn't think any one person could be that rich and yet I was.

While grieving for my grandmother, I was also slowly recovering. During those months, the police searched for E but couldn't find a trace of her. It wasn't until shortly after my grandmother's funeral that I finally got word about her.

Magnus turned up at my doorstep one night, and just behind him was E. But, it wasn't the E I remembered. This was a different E. She was a vampire.

After a few tense minutes we began talking and E told me what had happened to her.

The exclusives had dragged her away and managed to get her to an abandoned building just outside the city where they had bound her to a chair. Not much later, Karl had turned up, enraged at having let me escape and looking for vengeance. What exactly happened then, E has never told me, but from the little I've gathered, it cannot have been anything pleasant.

Magnus began smelling a rat when he found out about me and Sassy being attacked and he started to make his own investigations into the whereabouts of E. He found her too late to save her, but just in time that she would survive. What exactly does that mean? He found her just after she was turned, so he couldn't save her life, but he found her before she turned feral and would have to be "put down" for the good of the community. Magnus took over the responsibilities of a sire for her, and E is now doing great.

Their visit, however, wasn't so much allowing me to find out what happened to her as a warning. Karl was still around and he still wanted me. E didn't want what happened to her to happen to me, so she had convinced Magnus to help me escape.

During the next week, we planned my escape. Magnus helped us work through the details, for which I will always be grateful. I learned many things that week, including any number of things that will come in handy should I ever need to escape again.

After Christmas, we put the plan into gear. I got a new name and passport, told my family I would be going on an extended trip abroad, and I left. My family still thinks I'm in Europe, since that is where all paper trails end. Not even E knows exactly where I am..

I had always wanted to go to the USA so that's where I decided to begin my new life. I travelled around a bit to look at the country and then arrived in LA one morning in the middle of January."

End of part 3


	4. Chapter 4

Author notes: Ari is my RP character. This is the final part of her backstory of how she came to meet Josef and Mick. Many thanks to Jen for being my beta reader for this one

Rated R for safety

Disclaimer: If you recognize it then I don't own it. Ari is mine though, as well as Sienna. Any resemblance between them and any living, dead or fictional characters is purely coincidental! The other characters belong to their creators and owners. No copyright infringement intended in any way or form.

Comments are still the only food my muses accept so please... send any comments you have, good or bad.

* * *

Part 4

"Arriving in LA, I decided to spend my first few nights in a nice comfortable hotel. The first night I checked in, got my bags carried to the room and then went on a walk to clear my head. I had been traveling around for a while and needed some space to think, which I usually do best either behind the wheel or taking a long walk. Since I didn't have a car, I decided to walk. I'm used to being sort of safe even at night and I figured since the neighborhood was kind of high end, I wouldn't be in any danger if I went out on a walk by myself. I was wrong.

I hadn't walked for very long when I noticed that someone seemed to be following me. At first, I figured I was being paranoid after everything that had happened to me the past few years. I still moved a little faster. The person following me picked up their pace as well and suddenly I found myself snatched into an alley, pressed up against a wall with a knife at my throat and some thug growling at me for my money. I had left all my valuables back at the hotel so I had nothing of value except the gold bracelet my grandmother gave me for graduation and a few bucks in my pocket in case I wanted a drink. I tried to hide the bracelet but, of course, the thug saw it and took it, along with my few bucks, and then ran.

Still dazed- probably more like in shock, really- I walked back to the hotel and asked the desk manager to call the cops. When the young male cop arrived and took my statement, I had lost whatever patience I might have had. The poor guy got the worst of it. After he told me I could expect never to see my bracelet again, I completely lost it and started yelling at him. I can't remember what I said, just that I was yelling when a young brunette entered the room and interrupted by telling me she could help me get the bracelet back. The young man left when my focus was diverted by the brunette and I've never actually seen him after that. That was how I met Sienna, my best friend and one of the few people who know everything there is to know about me. Sienna gave me the name of a Private Investigator who she had heard was very good at solving almost impossible cases- Mick .

Over the next few days, she and I kept bumping into each other in various places in the hotel. We got to talking and slowly got to know each other. One night as we sat in the hotel restaurant I noticed the scars on her neck and quietly asked if they were what I thought they were. That, of course, led us into the topic of how I could know about them. I explained about my freshie friend and she told me about David.

First time I met Mick was when I knocked on his door after Sienna had given me his address. He opened the door and my usual fear of men hit me but something about him made me fight it enough to enter his office and ask if he would help me find my bracelet. He seemed surprised and almost reluctant at first but once I had told him the story behind the bracelet, he said he would do what he could.

His reluctance to have me around intrigued me. That and the kindness in his eyes kept making me go back to that office. At first, I went there to check how the case was going. But, each time I saw him, we somehow talked about other things beyond just the case. Even that first morning, we spoke about my grandmother and some general things about Los Angeles. When I went back a few days later we continued talking about Los Angeles, and about other parts of the country. When he found out I had decided to stay in LA and was looking for an apartment, he put me in touch with the landlord of his building. That landed me my apartment in the complex building opposite where he lived.

During all our talks, he seemed reluctant but friendly as I showed up. Almost as if he didn't want me there but was too kind to tell me that to my face. That in and of itself made me curious about him. That curiosity, combined with his kind eyes and the fact that he never once touched me without my consent or even came close to me, meant I slowly came to forget my usual fear of men.

Whenever he got a lead on the bracelet, he would bring me along to whatever pawn shop it brought him to so I could have a look at the bracelet myself. I found myself more and more enjoying his company. Relaxing around him, despite the fact I had my suspicions that he wasn't exactly what you'd call a normal guy. Once I was fairly sure I was correct I brought it up with Sienna and she confirmed my suspicion. Mick was in fact a vampire. That made him even more interesting to me, but also meant I was slightly afraid at first.

He must have noticed that fear, but he's never mentioned it to me. Not once. As soon as I had my suspicion confirmed, I changed my routine slightly. Before, I had usually shown up during the morning hours but well past sunrise. Now, I started turning up before dawn. We continued talking about a lot of things- How I was enjoying my stay in LA, how I was enjoying my apartment, movies we had seen, books we had read... just the usual chit chat. The bracelet barely factored into most of our conversations. When he finally did find my bracelet, I was very reluctant to let him out of my life, so I asked if I could continue to come talk to him and to my surprise he said yes.

I continued dropping by just before dawn and very soon, he started calling me Dawn which I thought was very cute. We discussed many things and our friendship grew to the point where I was starting to consider him one of my closest friends. I slowly came to trust him and after some time, I finally trusted him enough that I didn't mind if he gave me a hug without asking first. To this day, Mick is one of the three men I trust completely.

Mick seemed to warm up to me as well. He slowly began to let his guard down around me and I saw more and more signs of him being a vampire. So much so that one day I finally found the opening I had been looking for and could tell him I knew he was a vampire. From that day on, I kind of bombarded him with questions about being a vampire and the like. He answered some things, other questions he refused to answer. He had told me tidbits about his friend Josef earlier but now, Josef began appearing in our conversations more and more often. Mick often used Josef as an example for an answer to a question I had about being a freshie or being a vampire. He mentioned a few things about his own girls but not much. By then, I had ran into some in the hallway or entrance but never actually spoken to them.

As the months passed, I slowly came to trust Mick completely and I found myself viewing him as a kind, overprotecting older brother. So when I started considering trying out the freshie life, I knew two things.

1. I would never ever in a million years ask Mick to bite me. The thought kind of creeps me out to be honest. Should he ever be in a life or death situation, where it's bite me or he'll die, then I'll offer. But other than that… it would just be creepy to have your brother bite you, since a bite has distinctly sexual overtones. I know for a fact that he totally agrees with me there since he a few times has called me his kid sister, which I love.

2. It would probably have to be a female vampire since I have problems with men touching me.

When I first brought up the subject with Mick, he had a little fit about it. After many heated discussions about it he realized I was seriously considering this, and he told me he'd help me out. We talked about it at length, and he told me he wanted to make sure I would be safe, or at least as safe as a freshie could be. That, of course, lead to him giving me an invitation to meet his girls and Josef. We talked about that for quite a while and once he had explained that he trusted Josef completely, and thought Josef would be an excellent first bite for me to give me a taste of the life, I knew this was the way to go. The fact Mick trusted Josef made me feel like I could trust him as well.

So, tomorrow night I get to enter the freshie world. I will finally get to see what Mick's apartment actually look like and I will meet the one exclusive Mick still has, along with some other new girls that have been invited for the same night. I will also, hopefully, get to meet this mysterious Josef. I must admit, he intrigues me… and I haven't even met him yet"


End file.
